


The Driftwood Queens

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-01-30 07:42:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12649167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: Oh, yes. There had been a war between the living and the dead. Yara had informed Ellaria of this in the careless tones of someone who had been in chains on Pyke at the time and had only heard tales of it third hand. Ellaria found that she could sympathize.





	The Driftwood Queens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



The lock turned and the door to Ellaria's cell clanged open; Ellaria cringed back from the light. There were two armored men carrying torches and they looked Ellaria over, one with indifference the other with a leer. 

"She's in here, my lord."

A third figure stepped into the circle of light, and Ellaria tried to shrink back more. She squinted, blinked, and recognised the man as Yara Greyjoy's cringing brother, the gelding.

"You must come with us, Lady Sand." _Lady Sand_. Once Ellaria would have laughed at that name; she still wanted to laugh, albeit for different reasons. "My sister wishes to see you."

When Ellaria made no move to stand the brother - Theon, his name was Theon - nodded and the torchbearers took Ellaria's arms and dragged her to her feet. 

The last thing Ellaria saw as she was taken from her cell was the empty pair of manacles dangling from the opposite wall. 

Those empty manacles had been a blessing, the dark of the cell had been a blessing; they were the reasons Ellaria had survived with her wits intact.

That she-devil Cersei Lannister had meant for Ellaria to watch Tyene rot, but the last time Ellaria had seen her daughter she was being carried from their cell by the smiling sellsword who'd followed the Kingslayer to Dorne. 

Ellaria had strained at her chains and screamed through her gag for him to take her too, but he'd shrugged, said, "The queen may be mad, but she's still the queen, I'm hedging my bets," and thrown Tyene over his shoulder like a sack of flour, leaving Ellaria to watch the torches burn down until the darkness overtook her. 

She didn't know if her daughter had been breathing when she'd been taken, didn't know if there was any chance that she yet lived. 

Ellaria's throat was dry and scratched, and her tongue felt too big for her mouth. "Is--" she tried to say. She wet her lips with her tongue and tried again. "Is my daughter alive?"

"I don't--" Theon stood straighter than Ellaria remembered, and these men followed his orders, but his entire bearing was still apologetic, it followed him like a stench. "I'm supposed to take you to my sister."

Weary and heartsick, Ellaria didn't argue.

*

The last time Ellaria had been brought to this hall she had been in chains, Cersei Lannister had been on the Iron Throne, and Euron Greyjoy's Ironborn had surrounded them. 

There were still Ironborn in the throne room - one of them was urinating on a crumpled Lannister banner - but everything else had changed. The banners bearing the lion of Lannister had been torn down, some of them had been burned and still smoldered, and replaced with Targaryen dragons and Greyjoy krakens. And lounging on the Iron Throne, one leg thrown gracelessly over its arm, was Yara Greyjoy.

Yara rose and descended the steps from the throne. There was something subtly different about her. When Ellaria had first met the Greyjoys at Dragonstone, Yara had an easy, careless roguishness about her that had reminded Ellaria of Oberyn; now she seemed brittle, she reminded Ellaria of Obara, trying too hard to imitate her father's swagger and hoping no one noticed that it was a mask. 

The loss of Oberyn's eldest struck Ellaria anew. 

As she drew close some of the tension seemed to leave Yara's limbs, but it had little enough to do with Ellaria; Yara's gaze had skipped over the Dornishwoman to Theon, and it was her brother's presence that was a balm to her. 

"Ellaria," she said, focusing on the other woman. "I'm pleased to find you alive." 

Up close Yara looked dreadful, her gaunt face and the heavy shadows under her eyes exacerbated what had before been only a faint resemblance to Theon. But Ellaria supposed she was hardly a beauty at the moment either. 

Ellaria had spared few thoughts for what might have befallen Yara after her uncle dragged her back to Pyke as his prize captive, but found that she too was glad to see the other woman alive. 

*

Ellaria sank down into the hot bath that had been drawn for her in the chamber that had been Cersei's until the Greyjoy siblings had taken over of the royal suit. 

She let the water close over her head and held her breath until her lungs felt ready to burst. 

As she'd escorted Ellaria here, Yara had admitted that she'd had no word of Tyene, but the good news was that the army of the dead had not reached nearly so far south as Dorne. 

Oh, yes. There had been a war between the living and the dead. Yara had informed Ellaria of this in the careless tones of someone who had been in chains on Pyke at the time and had only heard tales of it third hand. Ellaria found that she could sympathize.

Ellaria surfaced, climbed out of the bath, and dressed in a gown she could only hope had not once belonged to Cersei.

Outside she found the Greyjoys sitting at a table heavy with food and wine; the spoils of the Red Keep's kitchens and cellars. 

Ellaria nibbled at her food, her stomach delicate from so long of nothing but prison slop. Theon picked at his plate too, but Yara ate like a woman who'd been starved for months, which she may have been; Ellaria was too raw over the circumstances of her own captivity to dwell on the specifics of Yara's.

"Is the dragon queen not here?"

Yara's mouth twisted. "I haven't seen Daenerys since we set sail from Dragonstone. No more than you have."

"Queen Daenerys is at Winterfell," said Theon, helpfully. "She's confined there until her heir is born."

"She's been busy, you see," said Yara. "She married herself a Northern husband, and then _misplaced_ him beyond the wall."

Theon pushed his plate away and stood. "I'm not hungry."

Yara waited until he was at the door. "Theon?" she said. "Don't go far, okay?"

"Of course not."

"The queen didn't come for you, then?" Ellaria asked, once Theon had departed.

"My brother came for me."

"And yet you fly her banner over King's Landing?"

"After my uncle died, Theon and I fired his fleet. The Golden Company found themselves stranded on the Iron Islands and in the market for a new paymaster; somebody is going to have to pay up eventually, and I'd sooner it was the dragon queen than me. Anyway, no Ironborn in the history of the Seven Kingdoms had ever taken this city." Yara took a long draught of her wine and grinned, looking again like the girl who'd desired to be queen of the pirates. "I'd always quite fancied being the first." 

"I'm pleased to hear that your uncle is dead." Ellaria thought again of Obara and Nymeria. "Did you murder him yourself?"

"No." Yara's grin twisted bitterly. "Theon killed him."

*

It was one of the Golden Company mercenaries who brought Ellaria to the top of the stairs leading to the black cells. He nudged her to go down. "You're wanted."

Ellaria wanted few things less than to descend back into that darkness, but she forced herself to hold her head up high and start down. As she neared the bottom she heard raised voices; it was unusual to hear the codependent Greyjoy siblings quarrelling. 

"The queen's orders--" began Theon. 

"Oh, the _queen_ ," said Yara, her voice a sneer. "This is the same queen who wouldn't spare you a single Dothraki or Unsullied when you wanted to sail to Pyke for me, and who flew her dragon to King's Landing and met with Cersei Lannister without once trying to arrange for Ellaria's release."

Ellaria reached the final step. "Lady Greyjoy, Lord Theon, I'm not interrupting, am I?"

Theon never could meet Ellaria's eyes; he cast one last, pleading look at Yara, and scurried away. 

"I told you that I didn't kill my uncle. Maybe I'd feel better if I had, maybe my own men wouldn't look at me like--" Yara trailed off with a frustrated snort. She held up the parchment she was holding. "Daenerys writes from Winterfell that the Kingslayer is riding for King's Landing; Cersei's fate is to be left in his hands."

Yara held the parchment up to one of the torches on the wall, and after it caught alight she dropped it and ground it to ash under her boot. 

Every instinct Ellaria had was telling her to find Cersei and exact her revenge, but she held herself in check. "Will this cause problems for you with the queen?"

Yara shrugged. "I won her the throne, I'm holding this city in her name, and ravens get blown off course all the time." Yara plucked a key from the wall and produced a dagger from her boot, offering them to Ellaria. "She's in the second cell down."

Cersei was chained to the wall of her cell; she was gagged but her eyes widened when she saw Ellaria, she knew it could only mean one thing. 

"Don't worry," said Ellaria, her mouth curving into a cruel smile, "I haven't come to kiss you," and she let her sleeve fall back to reveal the wickedly sharp dagger.

There was blood on Ellaria's hands when she left the cell, there was blood down the front of her gown, blood had gotten into her mouth. 

Yara smirked. "Feeling better?"

For her answer Ellaria hooked the neck of Yara's breastplate and dragged her forward into a bloody kiss.

*

Ellaria discovered why Yara wore her kraken-etched armor all the time: under it she was wasted and scarred from her imprisonment, 

Ellaria guessed that the scars Yara flinched away from having touched had been recently inflicted by Euron, and the ones that Ellaria was allowed to scratch and bite had been gained in the old-fashioned, time-honored pursuit of piracy. 

Ellaria pinned Yara's wrists above her head with one hand and with the other pumped two, three, four fingers into the girl's cunt; she thought longingly of the polished wooden cock that she used to fuck Oberyn with.

Fucking Yara Greyjoy, hard, in Cersei Lannister's bed as the former queen's body rotted far beneath them helped somehow.

"Funny how this helps," said Yara, as Ellaria sucked at the bloody and bruised bite mark she'd left on Yara's shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"Having it rough. After Theon rescued me, I left a girl in a Lordsport brothel in tears." Yara sounded ashamed of herself.

A pirate girl who prided herself on kindness to whores, in a different life Ellaria and Oberyn both might have found Yara endlessly fascinating.

They slept for a time, and fucked again when they woke. They were gentler this time, not sweet but almost sad.

"When will you leave?" Yara asked afterwards. 

"Soon. I still have living daughters in Dorne." Ellaria did not want to tempt fate by speaking Tyene's name, but if she still lived then Ellaria meant to find her. "And you must stay here to rule from the Iron Throne."

"At least until Daenerys sends someone more suitable south," replied Yara. "Her Hand perhaps, or the Wardeness of the North. And then--"

"You go home and become the queen of the Iron Islands, if a little later than planned."

Yara's blunt fingernails dug into the flesh of Ellaria's hip, and she couldn't meet the other woman's eyes. "My uncle had me stripped naked and dragged around Pyke on a chain like a dog. Our people don't despise Theon as they once did since he killed Euron. Even so, a naked queen and a cockless prince are not exactly the stuff Ironborn rulers are made of."

"You are also the only Ironborn in the history of the world to conquer King's Landing." 

Ellaria understood now why Yara had taken the city for Daenerys despite her newfound ambivalence towards the dragon queen, she'd been hoping to erase whatever shame she felt at her captivity with one glorious conquest. 

Ellaria took hold of Yara's jaw and forced the other woman to look at her. "I do not know the lay of the land at home, but if I still rule from Sunspear then you will always have an ally in Dorne."

"As you will always have an ally in me," promised Yara, her mouth curving into a small grin. "But before you thank me, remember that soon my forces may be little more than me and Theon in a rowboat." 

Yara's words were self-deprecating, but her broadening grin was easy, arrogant, and held shades of Oberyn. Ellaria was certain that, one way or another, Yara would emerge victorious, they both would.


End file.
